conclusions

the Rethinking Innateness and Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience notes ended up in the powerpoint presentation, and I don't feel like reproducing them here. not much point, as far as I can see.

I was just thinking of some things that I should say in the wrap-up report.

I need to emphasize more what the conclusions are from the research. something about how there are modules in the brain, clearly, but that looking for ones that are simultaneously innate and domain-specific isn't going to turn up much. the innate things in the brain seem to be lower level things that bubble up somehow to make more complex things.

I think what's wrong with the cobbled together collection of mental modules view is that it isn't a complex system. It's not hierarchical. It's just a collection of simple machines that together would look like something smart, but really would be more like a computer. I think what's interesting about the brain is that it's not like that. It's that there are complex relationships between the parts, and there's an unintuitive and mysterious recipe for how it all gets put together.

so maybe that's why the complexity part seemed to get lost a little in this project. the models I was dealing with aren't complex models, even though what they're trying to model is.

i think i shoudl also say something about how i'm not sure this was a good choice of project for me for this class. it's a topic I wanted to know more about, but in looking for what mI wanted to learn, I kept getting pulled away, either from the question mI was supposed to be answering, or from the themes of the course. Maybe the course and the topic could have worked better together, but it seemed like it wouldn't be in ways that were the sort of thing i like to do. not sure i can put my finger any more accurately on what i mean than that.